2018 Olympic Blurb Day 5

The favorite may have an off day. The weather might be a factor. Some unforseen calamity prohibits the favorite from doing the expected.

The underdogs sometimes prevail.

Ask Sarah Hughes or Tara Lipinski - skaters who had the programs of their lives and beat out higher-ranked favorites in women's figure skating.

At this point in the Olympics, I'm waiting for an American underdog to fall into a similar situation where she or he comes out of nowhere and defeats the favorite through hard work and perseverance.

So far, the closest I got was in men's luge and Chris Mazdzar winning the silver medal. I loved everything about it! Mazdzar was the slightest of underdogs - he has quite the accomplished pedigree as a luger and won a silver in his third Olympics. His accomplishment was also three days ago, and I'm getting antsy again.

"But Claire," you say, "the Americans have won gold medals every day since Sunday!"

You are correct in saying that. But those medals were won by the favorites in the event - even Red Gerard was ranked first in the FIS World Cup last year before securing gold on Sunday.

When we see the faces of our American athletes on Bounty paper towels and Minue Maid orange juice, we expect them to be the best in the world. But then the Olympics start...and we realize there are people in the world who are way, way better.

Day 5 and 6 are the days when Americans start to get a bit downtrodden because those highly-marketed athletes aren't getting the medals that we expected them to get. "We're Americans - we're the best at everything!"

(We're not.)

So now it's time for an unexpected medal. A gold by the American who was third in national qualifying and basically had no chance. A sudden resurgence of energy in the latter half of a race when other racers are slowing down. The face of complete and utter shock and elation when no one thought they could do what they just did.

Who's going to step up first?

Classroom Blurb
I took today to talk a bit about Korea with the kids. My friend Michelle had linked me to a website with lots of information about South Korea and North Korea, so I included bits of it for my kids in their giant Olympic packet. (More on that later.)

The first thing we covered was the 38th parallel, which gave me a chance to reteach latitude and longitude. I had to remind them that the degree sign doesn't mean temperature when dealing with latitude and longitude.

From the 38th parallel the kids were supposed to write down some facts about North Korea and South Korea as I read information from a booklet. I probably should have started with South Korea, because once we started discussing North Korea that's all they wanted to talk about. Even when I tried to divert them back to the topic of South Korea and all its technological advances, they just brought it back to North Korea. They couldn't comprehend that type of governmental structure and the fact that creativity and individualism is stomped out so aggressively. So there was a lot of questions like, "But what about...?" And my answers surprised them.

I hope their parents are prepared for the questions tonight. My bad.

Mini Blurbs

Today's watchlist:

figure skating

alpine skiing

curling

skeleton

hockey

Nordic combined

luge

Is anything cooler than skeleton? Luge is so old-fashioned. (And doubles luge? Even my kids snickered when they watched it.) The helmets are works of art - South Korea's Yun Sung-Bin had Iron Man painted on his, and it was incredibly realistic! I also saw a bear, several flags, and Ghost Rider.

Akwasi Frimpong of Ghana is a skeleton slider and I got to see both his runs today. He's not the top, but he loves his career and people love him. It was cool to see so many Ghana flags and hats in the skeleton crowd!

People think that skeleton is terrifying, but I think that downhill skiing is way more frightening. World cup downhill is basically going down a giant ice slope with no curves holding you in the tube. It's just you vs. the mountain!

My man Aksel Lund Svindal of Norway just won the men's downhill, by the way. If Ole Einar Bjørndalen isn't going to be competing in the Olympics this year, then Svindal wins "best name of 2018 Olympics."

In Team USA's curling match with Japan, the final stones were both almost the same distance from the center. They brought out a medal rod that gets screwed into the center of the house, and then it rotates around center and allows the judge to determine which stone was closer. I'd never seen that before! It took a good long while, but Japan ended up with the point in the end by millimeters.

Sometimes my phone forgets that its Chromecasting and I'm able to watch things streaming on the television as well as my phone. That happened this evening as I got on the treadmill, so at one time I had pairs figure skating on my phone, skeleton runs on my television, and women's giant slalom on my computer!

Fantasy update: I am down to second place. However I did gain three points yesterday from Germany's Natalie Geisenberger winning gold in luge!

I have tickets to see Black Panther tomorrow evening, so don't expect a long post. I'll do my best to get something up by the end of the day!

My name is Claire Nat! You can follow me on Twitter @CeePipes for lots of Olympic comments, or follow me on Facebook at facebook.com/blurbmusings. Check out my blog for other articles!Read about Day 6 HERE!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It has now been ten years since I first received my call as elementary school teacher. Back then, it seemed like I had my whole career ahead of me. I knew exactly how it would go:

Teach in a school while doing a little bit of music stuff,Teach in a school and do a bunch of music in the church and school, Be the music person in a church and school full-time, Compose a bunch of stuff while being the music person in a church or school, Be published in a hymnal that will be sung by thousands of people for years to come, and Conduct a really, really good choir at the WELS Worship Conference before retiring. Spend the rest of my years RV-ing around the country.

But God has other plans. I mean, God knows everything, so he knew my plans were futile. As a matter of fact, he probably laughed at my plans when I would think about them!

God knows best.

And after ten years of thinking I was on the right track, I realized I wasn’t.

A few weeks ago I wrote an article about my final days of teaching, and what I hoped for the future. It was a hard article to write, and really made me put down on paper the things that I have been dreaming about and meditating on all year.

Right before I left for my month-long graduate school session, I got a call from my current congregational chairman. He said the congregation had voted and extended me a one-year call to serve as their staff minister!

It was a lot to take in, especially because I was also mentally preparing for a wealth of knowledge to get poured in my brain. But it also took a big weight off my shoulders. For five months I had been completely in the dark about my future after June. But now the future was simple: I was staying where I was and working with people with whom I was familiar!

Starting tomorrow, I begin my work. When I listed off some of my primary responsibilities to friends and family, they went, "Wow, that's a lot!" But to me, it is all …

On Monday and Tuesday thousands of people were overjoyed and millions of people were upset when the lottery results for Japan and the United States (and others) appeared. Some started immediately planning for Tokyo. Others started counting down to the next time they could attempt to purchase tickets. And others are getting ready to view rhythmic gymnastics...and that's it!

What about me? And what's next? Let's dive in!

Tokyo 2020 Prep
This day was a major milestone in my planning. Once this day came and went, I could begin to think seriously about getting to Japan, making lodging reservations, telling my new bosses about this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and the need for some vacation time, and more.

The first reminder came from Ken Hanscom on Twitter:

Following this tweet, I checked my email:

The pressure was mounting. I logged onto my CoSport account. After the ticket request phase closed, they made sure we were all aware of it by sticking it right …